HarnMaster Kethira

I've long been a bit of the Hârn rpg setting, but recently a I decided to look at the latest iteration of the HârnMaster rpg system, HârnMaster Kethira. It's from Kelestia Productions and came out last year.

I convinced one of my two Sunday evening groups to give it a try. We used the pregens from the free starter adventure they have plus one character I generated, and I ran the group through a ranged and then melee combat just to jump right into the system where it is likely the most complicated.

In brief, HârnMaster in all its iterations is system very interested in realism and simulation of the lineage of the likes of Runequest and Chivalry & Sorcery.  Like those games it's a skills system, mostly resolving tasks with a percentile, roll-under system. It also has graduated success and several different iterations of how those degrees of success are used. In fact, like other games of this type from the 80s (which is when the original HârnMaster was released), many skills have sort of there own "minigame" in the sense that the resolving rolls may vary slightly (variations on a theme, in general) and the skill-specific results require consultation of a chart table often.

The rulebook is lucidly written and there were very few places compared to other games where the meaning of the rules was unclear or ambiguous. But there are a lot of rules. Particularly for melee combat where there are rolls for attack, defense, hit location and specific area, damage based on weapon type, armor as damage reduction, and then hit location-specific injury and shock rolls.

In the test I ran, the four PCs encountered seven gargun (orcs, roughly). This was admittedly probably more of a D&Dish encounter setup as opposed to a typical Harn one, but it was just a test and one I wanted to take up most of the session time. Mission accomplished in that regard!

The PCs eventually maimed enough gargun that the little guys broke and ran (stumbled or crawled mostly), but they kept getting really lucky morale rolls, so it took longer than it probably would on average. I also probably forgot to include some modifiers or effects in some places that might have made it quicker, but once I started to get the procedure done, if was more the toggling between screens of reference that took up time. It really needs a screen or even better a VTT implementation!

Despite the learning curve and the length of the combat, I do like things about the system and want to run it again. I think it likely works best where combats are rarer and/or shorter, but I think the robustness of the rules support all sorts of other activities from wilderness travel to social activities to crafting.